Bob Marshall: Yeah, I haven't heard you explain the Big Note before. So it's coming out now because it's been evoked.

Frank Zappa: Well... "evoked" (laughs)

Bob Marshall: Would you prefer to talk about these things more often?

Frank Zappa: No, I don't think you need to say them all the time. I think you need to say them once and then just have it out there, and then on to the next case. I don't think that it's something that anybody has to dwell on. I take these things as facts. I live my life using these facts as the guidepost to do my stuff. Somebody might hear me talking about the rates and think it was the weirdest, dumbest thing they ever heard in their life. I don't think that they are correct. I think that if they thought about it for while, they would see that there is some useful information in what I"ve just told you, but I've known this stuff for a long time and that's the way I do my work. That's just the way it works. I don't see how you can ignore the rates. You can't ignore time like that. Oh, the other thing that you have to realize is time doesn't start here and end over there. Everything happens all the time.

Bob Marshall: Is that a fact?

Frank Zappa: That is a fact.

Bob Marshall: All times, all cultures?

Frank Zappa: All time. Everything is happening all the time.

Bob Marshall: Our futures are happening now?

Frank Zappa: And already happened before. Everything's happening all the time. The reason I can say that is time depends on the point from which you're looking at it. It only appears that things are transpiring because we are here. If we were someplace else, they would not have transpired yet. If you could move your point of reference to the event taking place, you could change the way in which you perceive the event. So, if you could constantly change your location, you could live the idea that everything is happening all the time.

Bob Marshall: People don't see themselves doing that.

Frank Zappa: That's too bad. But they could. I think that one day somebody's going to say, "Yeah, that's right." Now, if we take that as the basic premise, then time travel is no problem.

Bob Marshall: Is that "discorporate"? Is that what you meant on WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY?

Frank Zappa: No, "discorporate" is talking about not being part of the corporation. "Discorporate" normally means to leave your body, but in the sense of that song, remember it says "Unbind your mind, escape from the weight of your corporate logo".

Bob Marshall: But that's leaving your body, your corporate body...

Frank Zappa: Your corpse.

Bob Marshall: Yeah, your corpse. But now you're talking about moving through time. I've heard mystics talk about what you just said. You're saying that's a possibility. How could you demonstrate that?

Frank Zappa: You could demonstrate it if you were a really good mathematician, I'm sure, which I'm not. That is something that I just take on intuition. It seems to me that it is a fact, and I will behave accordingly that everything is happening all the time. And the only way that I could attempt to aim somebody in the direction to prove it is: when an event is taking place, it has a lot to do with the position of the observer, and so if the event as a fact of reality is to be discussed or dealt with, you must always remember that the perception of the event is a byproduct of the position from which the event was viewed, the position in time and space. If you could modify your position in time and space, then the event becomes something else. It becomes a future event, or it becomes a past event, depending on where you are. These are all relative descriptive factors which have nothing to do with the actual event. That's only words used to describe the event. So, if we can just hop out of the bullshit for a minute and imagine ourselves located someplace else observing the event, the mystic procedure of telling the future, and the rest of that stuff, looks a little bit easier just because a person was able to relocate their consciousness and perceive it from a different angle.

Bob Marshall: During our break, you mentioned something about George Bush's campaign?

Frank Zappa: The thing about Bush is, if in fact he has won the election, then why is he still campaigning. And, if in fact he has won the election, then wasn't there a payment of forty- six million dollars that was either made to him, or split between him and Dukakis, which is part of that fund where everybody checks off a dollar on their income tax - all this campaign money. If he's won the election, then why is he still spending that money? Shouldn't he give it back? I think that if he insists on spending that money, then he's committing some kind of a fraud.

Bob Marshall: Did you see the movie called Cover Up?

Frank Zappa: Yeah, I saw it.

Bob Marshall: Barbara Honeeger is interviewed in it, but she was on a local L.A. radio station and she mentioned some forty million dollars. She also had on this former CIA man who phoned in and revealed a lot of Bush's skeletons. Did you hear that?

Frank Zappa: No.

Bob Marshall: They talked about some forty million dollars. Are you talking about that?

Frank Zappa: No, this is not secret money. This is from the government. This is the straight-ahead matching funds that the government handed over to both candidates just a little while ago, and the number I recall was forty-six million. And I don't know whether it was forty-six for both, split down the middle, or whether it was forty-six to Bush. But whatever it is, if he's already won, then he shouldn't go out and throw his granddaughter up in the air like we see him doing in the commercials. You know, get off the campaign trail, get out of the flag factory.

Bob Marshall: But the election hasn't happened. He hasn't won yet.

Frank Zappa: That's right. So, let us bear that in mind.

Bob Marshall: You mean the polls, the "pollstergeists".

Frank Zappa: Yeah, the "pollstergeists". That's right.

Bob Marshall: But there are so many people who would express that view. They're quite fed up with the polls. There's a massive sense of frustration.

Frank Zappa: The people who are fed up with the polls are the people who are already smart enough to see through the bullshit to begin with. The people who are bamboozled by the polls are the ones that are most likely to vote for Bush. It's the whole idea that Americans think a winner is so terrific, and if you put the little winner's crown on one guy before the election, the day after the election, you want to make sure you voted for the guy who won. Because when you talk to your buddies when they slap each other on the back drinking Miller Lite in the bar after the election, you want to have been on the team. And that's part of the peer pressure to move the votes around.

Bob Marshall: But there always seems to be candidates for that level of humanity. Do you expect your criticism could wake one of them up?

Frank Zappa: The criticism won't, but in order to motivate the people who are already susceptible to that sort of bamboozlement, you have to provide them with data through another way. You have to either do it through a metaphor or you really have to draw them a picture. They have to be persuaded. They can't work on the logical level. You can't just say, "Look, here are facts". Because those people have gone beyond the medium of fact retention or fact processing. They're "feelies". Everything that motivates them must be wearing warm and fuzzy clothing. They want to have that warm, fuzzy sensation that whatever it is that you're selling to them makes them even warmer and fuzzier. But it can be done. In order to do it, you need to have access to media so that the message can be presented properly. The problem is that the whole myth of the liberal media bias is preposterous because nobody who owns a broadcast license, or a newspaper, is a Democrat. They're all screaming on the right. And the flap about liberal media bias was manufactured by the right wing. The right wing goes to some of their friends in another part of the right wing and says, "You attack my network. You say that CBS is too liberal, and that gives us the license to behave more conservatively in order to appear to be fair". Thereby pushing any liberal idea completely out of their broadcast, and doing it in a way that's saying, "We're doing this to provide balance". Perfect fakeout. Because that's exactly what the people always wanted to do to begin with. The demise of the Red Lion Decision guaranteeing equal time for opposing points of view in a political situation - they got rid of that last year, or the year before. Most people don't even know that regulation doesn't exist anymore. It is no longer required of a broadcaster to give equal time to the opposition. And so the removal of that regulation, combined with the desire to have only one point of view presented to the American public, has given them this great opportunity in this election.

Bob Marshall: Of course, it is important that you say this, but how much do you wrestle with the stupidity of those who do not respond to these facts?

Frank Zappa: I make a distinction between ignorance, stupidity and idiocy. And fortunately we have an abundance of all three in the United States.

Bob Marshall: 'Unfortunately"?

Frank Zappa: Both.

Bob Marshall: "Fortunately and unfortunately".

Frank Zappa: That's right, because if you can understand all three specimens, you can communicate with them. You talk to a dog a different way than you talk to a cat, which is a different way than you talk to a goldfish. You have to understand that they do exist, and if you have to communicate with people who are in any one of those levels, or not in those levels, you have to find the language that gets the point across. The difficulty is not inventing the language, the difficulty is finding the medium by which to disseminate the language because a person such as myself does not have access to media. You can't. I tried to get a television show. You saw what happened. There's no way in the world they were going to let me on the air. And I believe, based on a conversation that I had with Michael King, the guy who runs KingWorld, here's how these guys think: For those of you who don't know, KingWorld is a syndicator that does Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, and Oprah Winfrey. They make an enormous amount of money. Basically, this man earns his living by providing an alternative to the news because the shows that he puts on the air are things that people watch when they don't want to watch the news. So he's made hundreds of millions of dollars by giving people an alternative to the news. We had a conversation in a restaurant about six months ago. He really didn't like Jesse Jackson, and I don't like Jesse Jackson either, but I said, "Jesse is such a huckster he ought to have his own television show. Give Jesse a talk show". And for a minute the cash register went off in this guy's mind, you know, Jesse Jackson with a talk show. Then he immediately said, "No way, I won't give the man a forum". And as much as they like money, and as much as he knew that if Jesse Jackson had a T.V. talk show he would have high rating, this guy wouldn't put Jesse on the air because he didn't want to give him a forum. And I have a feeling that that same conversation was repeated in certain ways when the topic of my talk show was brought up at networks. So, the problem is not how to say it, it's how you get what you're going to say into the ear of the person who needs to hear it. That's the trick.

Bob Marshall: Did you want to categorize the three levels?

Frank Zappa: Oh, what makes the difference? Well, "ignorance" means you simply were never provided with the information. So a person could be smart and ignorant at the same time. He could be smart in every other aspect of his life, but ignorant of certain types of information. "Stupid" means you have the information but because of some...

Bob Marshall: Perceptual deficiency?

Frank Zappa: Yeah, because of some personal inefficiency, you decide to perform an act which contravenes what you know. You do a stupid thing. Like, you know that you spent all the money in your budget, but still you had to buy that purse. Then that's stupid. You get away with it for a while, but it's stupid. "Idiot" I would think more in a medical sense. The person is capable of performing acts which could harm other individual because he is chemically stupid. There's something in the guy's brain. It's a mental health situation, whatever it is, but you don't want the guy flying your plane for you, or driving your bus, or writing your law. Now, we have all these. Then we have the people who are marginally rational. They pride themselves on having a certain amount of logic, and they have a certain size data base, they have a certain function to perform in society, but they won't go all the way. They won't believe in the facts to the point where they can carry it through to a truly logical conclusion. That means, at the critical point, they're going to opt for the easy way out. They can see what the real answer is, but they won't go for it because they just can't be bothered.

Bob Marshall: Yeah. Now, that's a different kind of inefficiency.

Frank Zappa: Yeah. But see...

Bob Marshall: That's a laziness or something.

Frank Zappa: Yeah, that's right. And that's more of a tragedy because those people know what's right. They have the mental equipment and they have the data base to do the right thing, and they don't.

Bob Marshall: Have you thought about what the causes of that holding back are?

Frank Zappa: It's a combination of institutionalized fear which is one of the major subtexts of American society right now. You feed people "Wooh, we're gonna worry about this" and it's a lot of worry that is sold to you as a subtext in all of your advertisements and...

Bob Marshall: Stress.

Frank Zappa: Stress and dread. There are people that have had their stress level artificially raised by advertising. And, at the point that happens, a certain piece of machinery in the logical part of the brain shuts down, and they've been tricked into believing that they are a creature other than what they are. They become the targeted audience of the advertiser. They've mutated into that, and all they would have to do is turn that part of the brain back on and they'd be free of that. They'd say, "Come on, what is this?"

Bob Marshall: It's hard to explain why they get susceptible to that.

Frank Zappa: You have to break down the sub-categories of the dread. I wish there was a way to graph this out, but advertising is very powerful, and in order for advertising to work, it works on a non-logical, subconscious, psychological level. And to induce people to buy things they don't need for reasons which are not there, they have to trick you. And they trick you with colours, they trick you with modifying the cutting rate of the commercial which then modifies the way in which you ingest the data. They do tricks, and part of what's involved in the data that they are tricking you into consuming is this built-in dread factor: "You can fail. Someone will laugh at you. You are impotent. You will be poor. You will die!" Various flavours of dread, they're lurking in there in different combinations, and, of course, after they've shown you the dread, they show you the light at the end of the tunnel: "Our product will allow you not to die. You will not have pain. These little yellow pills, this really works. Our car goes fast and it's red. You'll get a blowjob if you drive this!" That's all built in there, O.K. So, people have been conditioned to consuming the dread factor. They don't know they're getting the dread, but it's in there. And then the answer to their problems - a product. So, they're trading dollars to avoid the dread, and the dollars will be aimed in the direction of the product that solves this imaginary problem. Now, how many people do you know can look at a television commercial and analyse what is really going on there. Most people don't even bother to watch the spots. It's tricking them without their even knowing it.

Bob Marshall: Did you learn a lot about that when you were in advertising in your early twenties?

Frank Zappa: No.

Bob Marshall: Did you know that before, or did you figure it out with what you went through?

Frank Zappa: The first clues that I had to this were from a book called "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard which I read a long, long time ago.

Bob Marshall: That was in high school because it came out in the Fifties, I think? But you read it when you were quite young?

Frank Zappa: Yeah. I was in high school in the Fifties. I'm forty seven.

Bob Marshall: So, Packard turned you on to some of that stuff.

Frank Zappa: Yeah, but not what I"m telling you right now because the advertising was mutated into something different in the Eighties than it was in the Fifties, the whole technique.

Bob Marshall: Because many societal changes have happened. So, there's a different context, right?

Frank Zappa: It's not just the context. It's the style. Well, the flavour of the dread has changed. The types of things that people are afraid of have changed to some degree. Certain basics remain. Death is a constant. Impotence is a constant. Poverty is a constant. But at certain times in American history, certain things become more important than others With the growth of the Yuppie culture, the fear of impoverishment and people laughing at you is probably more dreadful than death or impotence. So, that particular type of dread would be stressed more in a 1980's commercial than it would in another era.

Bob Marshall: Would you say that the Yuppie culture was a natural product of the Hippie culture?

Frank Zappa: I don't know whether it's natural, but I can see that there's a logical continuum because the Hippie culture was not anything divine to begin with. Most of the people who joined that were just chumps looking for a good time just like the people who become Yuppies. The reason they join any kind of a movement, or a culture, is because they're looking for a home, they want to belong to something. Now, a lot of the people who became Hippies, maybe they knew that they didn't look good in Paisley and long hair, with joints dangling out of their mouth. Maybe they knew that was stupid, but they did it anyway because that was the only way they were going to get a blowjob that season. Now the Yuppies have gone beyond that. They have to have a Rolex, they have to have a Porsche, but they don't even care about the blowjob anymore because it's just about the dollars. Now, that's a mutation.